Yesterday Facebook rolled out its own free cloud gaming platform focused on mobile games.
The launch of the cloud service was announced by Jason Rubin, Facebook’s vice president of Play and co-founder of Naughty Dog Studios.
There is no stand-alone cloud gaming app. The service is available via the Facebook Gaming tab or directly in the news feed. Unlike competitors such as xCloud or Stadia, you will not have to pay a subscription fee for using the service.
At launch, five titles available: Asphalt 9: Legends, Mobile Legends: Adventure, PGA TOUR Golf Shootout, Solitaire: Arthur’s Tale and WWE SuperCard.
Since these games are free-to-play, devs will monetize them via IAPs. Facebook will receive a 30% commission on every transaction.
The cloud service is available on the desktop web and Android. The platform is not coming to iOS due to Apple’s restrictions on cloud gaming services.
“The ultimate goal of this endeavor is to use gaming to increase user engagement with the Facebook platform and power the company’s enormous ads business,” analyst George Jijiashvili explains. “This announcement gets one step closer to my prediction that Facebook will eventually offer the world’s first ad-funded cloud gaming service. The Facebook Gaming app is currently in the user-acquisition phase; it is offered completely free, without any ads. Facebook is likely to be utilizing the same strategy as it did with Instagram: Build a critical mass, and then gradually introduce monetization via advertising.”